This week at Planning and Housing Committee I was happy to support the motion brought forward by Councillor Troster regarding the possibility for the city creating its own anti-renoviction By-laws.
As a municipality, while the Province dictates many components of housing, including rental bylaws through Residential Tenancies Act and the Municipal Act, the City does have certain tools that can be used to help with the Housing and Homelessness crisis we are facing, and an anti-renoviction By-law could be one of these.
Councillor Troster’s motion asks staff to look more specifically at the City of Hamilton’s Renovation Licence and Relocation By-law and the Federal Tenant Protection Fund and the new Canadian Renters’ Bill of Rights and report back to the appropriate committee with regard to what the city would need to do to create it own By-laws.
This is not the first time we have discussed this type of By-law, in June of 2022 I put forward a motion to direct staff were to review the submitted Legal Opinion regarding Municipal Powers to Regulate Against Renovictions to see if further action outlined in the opinion can be taken by the City of Ottawa to protect Tenants Rights and issue a memo to City Council prior to the report Review of Tools to Prohibit or Prevent “Renovictions” be presented at Council for consideration.
At this same meeting staff were directed to examine several items related to creating a rental replacement By-Law, which looks at the ongoing problem of demovicitions. Councillors had not heard back on this direction to staff.
At the end of this week’s Planning and Housing Committee I brought forward an inquiry to have the status of this work examined. The work appears to have paused on this rental replacement bylaw, but creating one city wide would focus on demovictions, essentially formalizing something similar to what the City negotiated with Heron Gate – which included a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the developer, to ensure affordable housing units were included in the new development. Renters should be offered an equivalent affordable place to live when their home is demolished. They should not be victims of a developers plans to create higher priced units.
More specifically, staff were directed to look at ways to prohibit full or partial demolition or conversion of residential and rental housing with 6 or more units, as well as provide a 1:1 ratio replacement of affordable rental units in the new development. A rental replacement bylaw could also include ensuring existing tenants have a right of first refusal to the new units at the same rent and number of bedrooms.
Since that meeting in 2022 much has happened, including the province removing Section 4.2.3 of the new Official Plan, which included language to create a rental replacement bylaw.
The removal of such language halted progress on the joint-departmental workplan item.
However, in the fourth quarter of 2023, the province implemented Bill 150, which then re-instated Section 4.2.3 to the City’s Official Plan. As a result, the language has returned to the Official Plan.
Just this past March, we received a report from Steve Pomeroy that states we’re losing 31 units for every one unit that is built. In the report, it was recommended that the city implement a rental replacement bylaw to protect and/or replace existing stock.
A strong rental replacement bylaw could allow a future acquisition strategy in the city to be more strategic with its investments, as well as dovetail with any anti-renoviction and licensing bylaws the city may implement.
My inquiry is asking about the state of the previous work by staff, why it has halted, and how to get things moving again.
I am looking forward to seeing these discussions move forward, it is more important than ever that we revisit the directions to staff regarding a rental replacement bylaw and work to stop demovicitions.
We, as a city can do better by encouraging the preservation of affordable housing. One way to prevent housing from becoming unaffordable from renovictions or demovictions is to have housing units transferred to a non-profit housing agency. This recently happened early this year when Ottawa Community Housing (OCH) purchased 311 townhomes in the Tanglewood/Chesterton community from Minto housing. This arrangement protected these homes by placing them under the management of a non-profit that will not renovict or raise rents above provincial guidelines. As Chair of the Board of OCH, I am proud of this positive step taken by OCH to preserve family housing at affordable rents. I hope to see more of these kind of initiatives across the city.
